You have to close
the people who matter
Launching Great Careers
We mastered sales and marketing.
Then we taught it to thousands.
Most career coaches come from HR, recruiting, or academia.
We come from the room where decisions get made.
Between us, we've led organizations at Microsoft, Pinterest, PepsiCo, P&G, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, The Weather Channel, GlaxoSmithKline, and Booz Allen.
We built teams from the ground up, trained thousands, and generated billions in outcomes for the world's most demanding companies.
The skills that close billion-dollar deals close job offers too. Now we'll teach them to you.
Our mission.
Not a singular job. A robust career.
The path from campus to career is broken. Smart, high-potential students are falling through the cracks, not for lack of talent, but for lack of the one skill that changes everything: sales.
The world's best companies paid us to teach their people that skill. We will teach you how to understand your value, communicate it with confidence, and sell yourself with discipline in a way that lands you the right first job. And that skill will take you further, at every stage, in every market, for the rest of your career.
One skill changes everything. The ability to sell yourself.
Stef Mauler.
Stef is the founder of The Mauler Institute™, a global college counseling practice where she applies proven business strategies to help students gain admission to the nation’s top colleges.
She has watched brilliant students earn extraordinary admissions outcomes and then struggle to make the leap from diploma to career. That gap is personal to her. It is also the foundation of The Hired Side.
Before college counseling, Stef built her commercial instincts across finance, supply chain, and B2B consulting organizations, where the ability to position an idea, build a case, and move a skeptical audience drives outcomes and defines success. She brought those skills into the college admissions process and teaches them at Columbia University. Now she brings them to you.
M.B.A., Harvard Business School. B.A. in Economics and International Relations, University of Pennsylvania. Graduate Certificate in College Counseling, UC San Diego. Certified Educational Planner. Professional member IECA, HECA, AICEP, NACAC. Adjunct faculty, Columbia University.
Eva Papoutsakis Smith.
Eva has spent her career in one discipline - winning in the market. As Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and General Manager at Microsoft, Pinterest, The Weather Channel, Integral Ad Science, Ziff Davis, and Mediaocean, she has led the full arc of commercial growth, from brand positioning to pipeline to close.
She has built sales and marketing teams from the ground up and trained hundreds of professionals in how to find their edge, articulate their value, and sell themselves and their ideas under pressure. She has also sat across the table in final-round interviews and made the call. She knows with precision what separates the candidates who get the offer from the ones who don't.
Her conviction drives everything she teaches - learning to sell yourself is not a personality trait. It is a methodology. And the students who learn it early have a durable edge over everyone they are competing against.
M.B.A., Harvard Business School. Dual B.S. in Economics and Communications, Cornell University.
Sara Bland.
Sara has spent her career at the intersection of commercial strategy, brand, and organizational performance across some of the world's most iconic companies.
Most recently as Executive Vice President of Strategy at PVH Corp and Kontoor Brands. Sara’s experience includes senior leadership at PepsiCo, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter and Gamble, and Booz Allen, across strategy, finance, marketing, insights, innovation, and supply chain, in markets spanning North America, Europe, India, China, and Russia.
What Sara brings to The Hired Side is rare - the ability to read a market and translate it into action. She understands how companies think about talent, what they actually need versus what they say they need, and what signals conviction in a candidate versus doubt. That is what she teaches.
M.B.A., Harvard Business School. Master's in International Relations, Cambridge University. B.A. in Psychology, York University.
The world's best companies paid us to teach their people that skill.
Now we teach it to you.
